Suicides are killing more youths than illness. How we can curb this massive killer?

Vivek, a fifteen year old school going child said goodnight to his parents before going to the bed. Everyday,he would get up 6:30 AM in the morning and get ready for school. Next morning mother noticed there was no activity in Vivek’s room and door was locked from inside. She smelt some wrong and raised alarm. Dad peeped from the window and what he saw was something which shattered entire family. Vivek’s body was hanging on the ceiling fan with a rope tied around his neck. Entrance exam pressure is not the only thing driving young people over the edge. Suicide is the biggest killer of 15- to 24-year-olds in India, followed by road traffic accidents, a data from Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 shows tracked death from 306 diseases, injuries and risk factors across 188 countries. Globally, road injury is the biggest killer in this age group, which makes up 1.8 billion of the world’s 7.1 billion population.

While death from infections such as tuberculosis, malaria, diarrhea and lung infections have declined steadily, data shows all’s not well for India’s largest ever generation of teenagers and young people. Suicides have almost doubled in teenagers and young adults in India since 1990, replacing tuberculosis and injuries as the top two causes of death in a little over a decade. This statics raise some questions, like –

• What drives many hundreds of young people to take their own lives each year?
• Are they stressed about the rapidly changing social and economic uncertainties?
• Is the fear of potential joblessness driving them to despair?
• Do they lack the emotional maturity and the social skills needed to negotiate life?

It’s very important to know the depths of the circumstances which drive teenagers to end their lives. Youth who are on the threshold of their career, commit such step leaves their parents devastated for rest of the life. We have tried to collect some data and stats which will help us to understand circumstances, reasons and preventing such situations.

No impulse control – The reasons are both physiological and social. Teenagers and young adults are far more reckless than adults, and here’s why. Their brains are vulnerable to react more impulsively to threats. Studies reveal that the duration when a child enters teenage, some biological changes occur in the ventral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that helps regulate responses in emotional situations. It makes teens react rather than retreat from danger. This proclivity for risk because of changes in the brain that occur specifically during this age partly explains why more teens die in accidents and suicides than people in other age groups.

It also explains why teen brains bust all rationality parameters when faced with emotionally-charged social situations, such as relationships and conflict. Young men do worse than women, which suggests gender plays a role in impulsive response, perhaps because the male hormone testosterone peaks in young men during the late teens and early 20s. This finding that corresponds with the ratio of crime, substance abuse and road accidents in young men versus young women, reported a study in Developmental Neuroscience.

The connections between the emotional and the decision-making centre of the brain fully develop by the age of 25, and until then, teens are unable to cope with overwhelming emotional stimulus.

Data from suicide helplines in India shows relationship problems and isolation by peers are the biggest suicide triggers among men and women under 25, while financial problems is the main driver for older adults.

Deaths in (Indian) youth have been rising for the past decade, while other countries such as China and Sri Lanka have achieved just the opposite. As an immediate priority, the Centre must launch a national programme with active youth participation to address these leading causes of death and illness.

On their part, adults, be it parents, teachers, friends or colleagues, can help young people more resilient to emotional situations. Simple measures such as letting them vent their fears of being abandoned can help them reach emotional stability and ride the maelstrom of emotions and apprehensions that haunt them. Instead of placing blame or offering unsought advice that is likely to make them retreat behind an impenetrable sullen or hostile wall, be the anchor that holds them steady in the emotional turbulence engulfing their minds.

Teens do not deliberately end their lives; it’s some biological changes in their brains which make them easily prone to suicides. Parents and other stakeholders like teachers, siblings or other family members are required to have a close watch on behaviour of children and accompany them most of the time in the day. Parents most of the time attribute shortage of time for not giving the required time to children, but rather than putting children in such threat, it’s better to spend time and share positive thoughts with children. Hope collectively we all will be able to prevent this killer ‘suicide’ from the society.